Dialing Yesterday to Save My Mother

Summary

My dad was dead drunk again, drowning himself in cheap whiskey because he missed my mom. That was when his phone started to ring.

I stared at the screen, my heart stopping at the caller ID: "Wife".

I froze. Mom had been dead for two years. Her number had been deactivated a long time ago.

Hands shaking, I swiped to answer. A voice drifted through the line—familiar, yet impossibly distant.

"Hello? Is this Lester, eight years in the future? Guess who!"

She sounded so bright, so sweet. It was nothing like the fragile, raspy whisper the cancer had left her with before she died.